Quotes & Sayings About Writing Characters

No writing is effortless. I'm not saying you can't have a good day where the words just kind of flow, but even those words have to be edited. Probably more than once. And I'm not saying a character hasn't somehow gone in a different direction that I wanted her to go, but that was me, not her. I let her get away from me. I let her roam free and nine times out of ten, the result is not good. I have to go back and start over because she veered off the path of my book. She changed the vision. And I did that. Not her. — Darynda Jones

For me, it's important that I experience and feel what the characters are feeling. So I put myself in those moments, in their thoughts, and let it happen naturally. I write what I feel. — Chevy Stevens

I talk to myself on paper about my characters - sometimes writing in first person ... I keep lists of unanswered questions that I can always turn to in order to get myself going. — Phyllis A. Whitney

I think I've been very lucky. The readers who write to me say they like the characters and the sense of a real world, often one they don't otherwise know about. And usually there's a funny bit in there somewhere. — Sophie Weston

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end? — Johnny Rich

I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show. — Sara Sheridan

I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie. — George R R Martin

I have always been drawn to characters, and this was true for my feature-writing career as well, where there is a tension between rule-breaking and rule-following. — Matt Nix

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit. — Cynthia Voigt

Sometimes I scare myself at how easily I slip inside my mind and live vicariously through these characters. — Teresa Mummert

I write 1,000 words a day first thing in the morning but I cannot write 240 characters to describe a piece that I spent six weeks working on with a producer. — Daniel Alarcon

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against. — Lauren Groff

We live today amid ritualized anithumanisms. Among those intelligent enough to feel despair, some seek salvation in the literary artist. Artists love flattery; and the scam doesn't work without mystifying the process.

The weather is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Wall Street is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Writing is unpredictable, (like street and sky, there are too many variables.) Its mystery vanishes, like a shadow, the moment the light aimed at your characters turns back upon yourself. — Doran Larson

Characters are incredibly important, but I tend to build them around the plot during the outline stage. However, once I'm writing the manuscript, the characters I'm writing dictate how the plot unfolds. — Aimee Carter

Character development is vital when writing a strong story. Weak characters make for weak stories. — Beem Weeks

The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them. — Claudia Bakker

I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes. — Anne Rice

When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it? — Joss Whedon

You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross. — Jacqueline Woodson

Voice is really about letting your characters loose. — C.S. Lakin

It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them. — Anne Tyler

Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town!) — Nick Hornby

Men have external genitalia, while women have internal genitalia. This simple difference makes a lot of difference in how they write about themselves - and how you might write about your characters. Male writers don't often address internal sensation in a character, because they don't experience it (and probably often don't realize consciously that it's there). This accounts for a lot of Really Terrible sex scenes written by men (if you look at the "Bad Sex-Scene Awards" in any given year, you'll see that the vast majority are done by male writers). — Diana Gabaldon

I never knew what an extraordinary thing it could be to write a book. In the first place, the characters take the bit between their jaws and canter off with you into places you don't want and never catered for. I had smugly intended my book to be about a family rather like ours, but, lud love you! it's already turned into an account of a barmaid's career in an Edgware Road pub, and I can't squeeze us in anywhere!

Odd things happen, too. I had called my pub, 'The Three Feathers,' and counted on there being heaps of pubs in Edgware Road, not called that, but looking a bit like my description. Before we left home, I went down Edgware Road to investigate, and found my pub, even down to the old-fashioned phonograph on the table in the upstairs sitting-room. And I thought, 'I built that place. — Rachel Ferguson

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result. — Louis Sachar

I've always been drawn to writing historical characters. The best stories are the ones you find in history. — Tony Kushner

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. — Joss Whedon

There's a certain magic about writing even when the characters refuse to act the way I want them to. — Gloria Bevan

When you're writing TV or movies your vernacular is time, it's all based on rhythms, a character takes a beat or two characters have a moment, like everything is about time. And when you're writing a comic, everything is about space. It's how many panels to put on a page, when should you do a full page splash, what is the detail that you see in any particular image. — Eric Kripke

Just because we're fictional characters doesn't mean you can pick us up and move us anywhere you want.
the people of Lake Woebegon — Garrison Keillor

Whether your characters journey daily to a distant moon or just down the street to the corner bar, what matters to the reader is the singular event that distinguishes one such voyage from all the others and makes for a story worth telling. — Peter Selgin

I'm a blank canvas that I can paint however I desire. For the first time ever, I get to be the character in my own fantasy land. — E.K. Blair

Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***. — David Mamet

Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters. — Phil Klay

Good fiction is trawling back into the past and digging up the real characters who've influenced your entire being. — Ken Scott

There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV. — Vera Farmiga

Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the "irresponsibility" of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life. — James Wood

Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it's very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen. — Michelle Paver

Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing. — Jorge Luis Borges

When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing. — M.J. Rose

My stories usually begin with the characters and some elements of how power (personal, political, magical) functions in the world. The rest develops as I write, and research helps a great deal with that. If you're going to write about an agrarian economy, research agrarian economies. If your main character is starving, then you should know what it means for a malnourished body to break down. — Leigh Bardugo

Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters ... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols. — Ernest Hemingway,

For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction are strictly limited — Virginia Woolf

I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium ... Shakespeare can not be recognized either as a great genius, or even as an average author ... far from being the height of perfection, [King Lear] is a very bad, carelessly composed production, ... can not evoke among us anything but aversion and weariness ... All his characters speak, not their own, but always one and the same Shakespearian, pretentious, and unnatural language ... — Leo Tolstoy

My most important goal as a romance writer is to satisfy readers by creating memorable characters, offering insights on life, and, most of all, touching hearts.
I derive the greatest satisfaction when I hear from readers who have been genuinely moved by my books and/or who identify with the characters or situation. I also confess to reveling in the feeling I get when I type "The End" on a manuscript. — Laura Abbot

I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them. — Tess Gerritsen

All of a sudden, I sort of started to feel that I was constrained by the characters as opposed to enjoying them. And that remains for me to this day the line that I know where it's like, OK, you're not writing fan fiction anymore. — Naomi Novik

On past records I usually did start with a story or an idea for a song and then write around it, but on Achilles' Heel I would just start writing and try to let the song and my sub-conscience determine the direction. which is a goofy way of saying I tried not to decide before hand what the song and or the characters would do and be like. — David Bazan

I need to have some depth in my characters. That's why they are all Bengalis. I can't imagine writing a book with someone called Saxena as the hero. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible. — C.S. Lewis

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed
he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog. — Graham Greene

Action, reaction, motivation, emotion, all have to come from the characters. Writing a love scene requires the same elements from the writer as any other. — Nora Roberts

I believe it's incredibly important to write against [racial] stereotypes. If we give in and make sure that all black women characters are asexual, gentle, and kind we wind up with another set of stereotypes. — Justine Larbalestier

Writing is really freeing because it's the only part of the process where it's just you and the characters and you are by yourself in a room and you can just hash it out. There are no limitations. — Dee Rees

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters. — Ron Carlson

When I write songs, I try to remove myself a little bit. Obviously they're very personal to me, but it feels easier if I feel like I'm writing characters. — Hozier

Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power? — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Being an author means, almost by definition, that you make up characters and then complicate their lives. That's it, really. You make up characters and give them problem after problem after problem. — Maureen Johnson

That's the whole point of writing to me - I put my characters under incredible duress, and from that comes their truth. In a way, I'm using them to try to find my own answers in life. — R.A. Salvatore

Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough
sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any
way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised,knowing the characters' actions may change. It makes no difference
how clumsy the sketch is - sketches are not supposed
to be polished and elegant. All that matters is that, going over
and over the sketch as if one had all eternity for finishing one's
story, one improves now this sentence, now that, noticing
what changes the new sentences urge, and in the process one
gets the characters and their behavior clearer in one's head,
gradually discovering deeper and deeper implications of the
characters' problems and hopes. — John Gardner

I work sometimes from outlines, which are immediately abandoned. Sometimes, when I'm trying to find the characters, I'll sketch things out a bit. Sometimes, outlines help me aim a little bit, but I tend to find it's usually much more interesting, especially with the first draft, to spew it onto the page. I used to get very nervous that, if I write this first rough draft and I die that night, whoever finds it might think that I thought it was good. For me, it's much more important to get some general shape onto the page and later take all the time I need to refine it, fix it, and rewrite it. — Paul Rudnick

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing. — Alan Lightman

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot ... — John Gardner

So much of the writing is not conscious, in the sense that it's not calculated. I remember in film school we had so many studies with big fancy words where you could dissect a movie and make charts of all of the characters' complicated inner relations and themes and what does this mean? And it's overwhelming as a student. It's great for a student, but as a writer, it's paralyzing. — Don Hertzfeldt

But being able to talk to so many patients from so many walks of life gives a tremendous window into people's lives. This is not to say I want to write about individual patients, but I think that after listening to the concerns of people who are so different from me, I can more realistically portray characters who are so different from me. — Daniel Mason

Characters are limbs that writers use to kill with. — Joseph Eastwood

If you're a writer, you'll know it by the distinct feeling of only being able to breathe properly when alone with your characters. All other times, I'm panting
just pining for the next time I can be with them. — Karen Luellen

In older science fiction stories, they had to rely on storytelling as opposed to spectacle. The old run of the 'Twilight Zone,' the star was the writing and the storytelling, and the characters and the twists and the cleverness in the setup and payoff and execution. — Josh Trank

A good novel, one which entices the author as much as it beckons the reader. — W.J. Raymond

Writing isn't about creating perfect characters. There's no such thing. It's about creating characters that are real; flawed
yet beautiful, in that they know they need another person. Needing someone else doesn't make them weak; if they believed all they needed was them self, they would be. A strong heroine isn't afraid to admit that a best friend, or soul mate, is exactly what they need at one moment or another. A strong heroine never stands alone. They stand tall; they believe in who they are. They are perfect in every human flaw, because as humans we are flawed. And in every flaw, I see the perfection of their souls. Writers breath life into simple words and create beings
flaws and all. — Cassandra Giovanni

In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.'
I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately. — Madeleine L'Engle

When I was writing my first draft, and feeling grandiose, I e-mailed an artist/clothing designer I know and suggested we collaborate on a fashion line inspired by the outfits my characters wore. I regret that we never did that. — Heidi Julavits

Me, i'm going to write ass-kicking trans* characters. I think I might end up writing not a single thing that is "pure" by some people's standards. Just because, and because I can. — Aleksandr Voinov

When I use people I know, all of my instincts seem to go dead, and if I'm getting anywhere near myself then I can't do it. It's actually a real weakness! I hate writing personal essays, I don't think I'm especially good at it. I like just encountering [my characters], discovering them. I love the escape of just being surrounded by all these people who are nothing like people I know. But I don't find it hard to be in the middle of a different life, with a different set of habits and way of thinking and talking. That seems to come easily to me. — Jennifer Egan

I never want to write something until I know every scene in the movie. I don't want someone hiring me and then me not being able to write it. Which is always a fear. So I like to figure it out, know all the characters, and know almost every scene in the movie before I start writing. — Stephen Sommers

The thing I'm writing now, I have various characters, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this couple dies. And they have a daughter ... I thought, 'OK, we have to do something with the daughter' ... then I realized she's not really their daughter. She has her own story. And she's become the most interesting character. She was this throwaway character that I didn't even conceive of before I started writing her into it, and now she's become very important in this book. — Sandra Dallas

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium. — John Banville

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons. — Bruce Eric Kaplan

Advice to a new writer: There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn. — Anne Rice

The art of reading, it occupies your mind no matter at any situation or mood you're in..bringing you to completely different world, the enchanting world of the characters..giving you the best feeling after reading it..the art of writing, it shows who you are, what are your real passions, what you've been through..inviting other people to see and experience your own world..hoping they have the best feeling that you have when writing it. As much as the feeling you always have when you read the books you've read before.. — Asrie Budiasriati

My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company. — William S. Burroughs

That's what novels are: They're amalgams of archetypes, collections of random traits one observes in other people through life, blended into fresh characters. — Michael Callahan

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. — Patrick Rothfuss

Real people, smart or otherwise, sometimes make stupid choices, and despite judgment, whether from other writers, readers, or haters, books with outwardly stupid characters making stupid choices will continue to sell, because if you dig a little deeper, you'll find a reason for a character's moment of idiocy; and more notably, this moment of idiocy amidst the chaos of life is real and relatable. — Shona Moyce

I am a creator, writing like the wind, I carry the weight of a future world in the barrel of a pen, etching my characters into the paper with life giving ink so my dreams and reality might finally meet. — L.M. Fields

When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books. — Roald Dahl

I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing. — Chris Cleave

I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves. — Karen Traviss

I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters. — Roger Zelazny

I am not in control of how my characters live their lives, only in writing it down. — Kim Iverson

I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch. — Sasha Roiz

When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant. — John Phillips Marquand

It's something that's difficult to explain but I think all writers work this way to some extent, whether we're aware of it or not. For me, writing has little to do with thinking. I don't want to control the narrative. I listen to the rhythm of the words and dialogue and try to give the characters the space in which to say and do what they want without intervening too much. — Mary J. Miller

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. — James Hampton

With a click, my novel would be born; it would come out into the light suddenly transformed from the hypothetical text composed in my imagination into finished, tangible thing with a real and independent existence. The moment of clicking on the print button always gave rise to strange and powerful ambivalence
a combination of self-satisfaction, gloom and anxiety. Self-satisfaction for having finished writing the book. Gloom because taking my leave of the characters has the same effect on me as when a group of friends have to depart. And anxiety, perhaps because I am on the verge of delivering up into other people's hands something that I treasure. — Alaa Al Aswany

The characters tell their story - I am merely the tool used to record it — Marti Melville

I read and write for character. If I like and can relate to the characters in a story I can enjoy any kind of story. I also want something with a definitive plot - you know, beginning, middle and end--that has forward motion. I don't like series books that leave you hanging after you've finished a book and in my own fiction I try to make sure that there's always an entry point for those who are new to the book as well as long-time readers. — Charles De Lint

One of the things I find in writing about people who are dead is that, after a short or long time, no matter how close the relationship was, they become like characters in fiction. — Michael Lindsay-Hogg

The hardest part about writing is falling in love with your characters. I can't even tell you how many times I've wanted to take one of them out for a beer, but I can't, because I made them up in my head. It's heart breaking, but it also means you created someone real, and there's no equivalent for that feeling. — Quinn Anderson

I didn't set out to write a book with no real male characters, but men were not important to my narrator, who was much more interested in maternal and pseudo-maternal love, so they were unimportant to me. I didn't even notice the lack of men in the story until I finished it. But once I did notice it, I was kind of delighted. Apparently, my subconscious is totally sexist. — Janice Erlbaum